Ander is a compact, quick-moving lightfoot halfling with warm brown skin, hazel eyes, and thick chestnut curls usually tied back with copper wire. He wears carefully maintained studded leather beneath a soot-darkened apron, though nearly every pocket is slightly overfilled with screws, chalk, folded notes, and half-finished tools. His gloves are patched at the fingertips, while a small brass magnifying lens hanging from his collar is polished obsessively. Within a minute of meeting him, most people notice the smell of cedar oil, lamp smoke, and peppermint resin that clings to his clothing.

Ander is warm, inquisitive, and relentlessly practical. He enjoys asking questions more than making declarations, but once he recognizes a problem, he becomes difficult to distract from solving it. He is patient with honest ignorance, impatient with deliberate waste, and unexpectedly bold when someone smaller or less protected is being threatened.

Ander grew up in a halfling river settlement where broken locks, cracked kettles, and jammed ferries were treated as ordinary inconveniences rather than reasons to despair. His grandmother ran the village records room, and his uncle repaired every mechanical object that came through the door. Ander spent his childhood copying old maps and asking why things failed. He became a sage almost by accident, first repairing the brass mechanisms of the archive's cabinets, then cataloguing the strange devices found in forgotten ruins along the river.